Today's information management systems have been designed to manage information (for example, retrieval or storage of information) based on a predefined information structure. The predefined information structure comprises a number of distinct fields, which are used to represent a particular type of information. For example, one of the fields may be used to store a person's telephone number whilst another of the fields may be used to store the person's address. A problem associated with using a predefined information structure is that unless a field has been allocated for representing a particular type of information, it can be difficult to readily store the particular type of information in the predefined information structure. For example, existing systems designed to manage personal contact information (eg telephone number and address) generally do not have the ability to store the medical details of a person. This is primarily due to the fact that the predefined information structure used in systems designed to manage personal contact do not have fields allocated for storing medical records.
There are two possible options for addressing the above problem associated with employing a predefined information structure. A first option is to have the information management system modified such that the predefined data structure comprises the necessary field. A second option is to replace the existing information management system with a new system that is capable of managing the required information. Unfortunately, these two options are generally undesirable because they can involve significant cost and can result in system downtime.